Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 6, 2014

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of American federal legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Act into law (pictured) during the height of the Civil Rights Movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended it five times. The Act allowed for a mass enfranchisement of racial minorities across the country, especially in the South. Section 2 of the Act prohibits state and local governments from imposing any voting law that has a discriminatory effect on racial or language minorities, and other provisions specifically ban literacy tests and similar discriminatory devices. Some provisions apply only to jurisdictions covered by the Act's "coverage formula", which was designed to encompass jurisdictions that engaged in egregious voting discrimination. Chiefly, Section 5 prohibits these jurisdictions from changing their election practices without first receiving approval from the federal government that the change is not discriminatory. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula as unconstitutional, reasoning that it no longer responded to current conditions. (Full article...)

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